Who says you need to be a
professional dancer or musician to feel like a star, or even better, perform in
front of hundreds of people? The power of illusion may be the greatest
invention yet for the gaming industry. At PAX East, the Xbox Kinect stations
gave thousands of attendees a taste of virtual reality, including this power
duo rocking out to Yolanda Be Cool and DCUP's "We No Speak Americano" on
Dance Central 2

If you think
spending hours playing a computer game is nerdy, try going to a convention like
PAX East 2012. And if you think that's nerdy, try showing up dressed as
one of the video game characters you play. I couldn't think of a better way to
spend the weekend. A variety
of virtual warriors came to life and competed for the top prize in the League of Legends booth's cosplay contest, including Caitlin, Ezreal, Jax, Malzahar and
Singed.

PAX
East has come and gone. With panels, PC and Console freeplay stations,
tabletop tournaments and over 100 show floor exhibits all
happening simultaneously, the biggest challenge of my one day at PAX (Sunday) was figuring out
what darned thing to do. I chose to stick to the main exhibition hall and get
as many game demos under my belt as possible.

Above, watch the illustrious JoCo play his best-known song, "Code Monkey". It's an anthem for the nerd proletariats stuck in dead-end IT jobs with managers who lack web savviness. Especially those of us who are too shy to talk to people we have crushes on. Also known as, almost everyone who attends PAX East.

Aw, were Paul and Storm bitter about having to play right before that great bastion of nerd-rock, Jonathan Coulton? Probably not, because they got quite the crowd on their own, rendering this tongue-in-cheek song about openings acts a bit out of place. The Main Stage was at capacity for the Saturday night concert on the PAX East mainstage, so there were 4,000 nerds rocking out to Paul and Storm, happy to throw pieces of their Portal 2 cosplays at the pair, if not pairs of panties.

Kris Keyser rocks PAX East's Boston 8 Bit showcase with his cover of Guile's Theme from Street Fighter II (it goes with everything, after all). He apparently has never played this cover live before, but had to at this showcase, "because it's PAX." Aw, thanks, Kris.

PAX East's Friday night concerts featured Supercommuter, Minibosses, Metroid Metal and the Protomen, in that order. I went to see the middle two bands.

The show floor with video game demos closes at 6 PM, and even the jamspace closes around 7 PM, so there's not much to do at PAX during the night-time besides get drunk with your gaming group at City Bar or rock the fuck out to nerdcore rock music.

This weekend, what is perhaps the nation's most rabidly anticipated gamercon invades the South Boston waterfront -- once again, PAX East returns for another three-day stretch of overstim goodness, as thousands of vidjagame fans pack the BCEC to demo new titles in the jam-packed expo hall, blister their thumbs in all-night LAN parties, watch industry luminaries drop science on everything from gamer gender politics to the Future of Dungeons & Dragons, and maybe see Gabe and Tycho draw random dongs on a giant screen.